Collegiate Times

Just because people think that its OK and everything has achieved a sense of normalcy because you have Mardi Gras and you have jazz fest, and you have all the festivals, et cetera. But if you move beyond the French quarter and certain areas in to the very heavily damaged areas, there's still a lot left to be done and in some cases its almost as if nothing has been done to rectify the problem of that disaster that catastrophe.

Q: You actually perfectly segued me in to my next question, which is: Has this tremendously unfortunate disaster possibly become a blessing in disguise and will New Orleans perhaps rise out of this as one of the emerging leaders of sustainable development?

I would hope so. I would hope that these opportunities would avail themselves to get more and more organization leaders and public-private partnerships, some of that is going on right now, but I think that it's hit or miss.

In terms of, for example, transportation, and if you're talking about rebuilding a city and rebuilding in a way that can deal with some of the emerging issues around vulnerability and climate change and this whole question of justice, rebuilding in a way that can have livable, walkable, compact neighborhoods where you have areas where there are alternatives to driving, with green space and buildings that are green and schools that are green and even transportation that's green.

And those things are not just pie in the sky, that it's a great opportunity to do that and to allow New Orleans to be one of the showcase cities for seeing how you can create this smarter, fairer, greener city. But you know, if you talk about this whole issue of sustainability, if we just talk about rebuilding in away that is economically viable and in way that environmentally sustainable, if the issue of the equity component is not addressed, I think it's a major piece that may get left off.

The fact that New Orleans has a tremendous housing shortage and a housing shortage at the lower end, in terms of working class houses and apartments as well as housing for low income. Before the storm the average one bedroom apartment was $600, today it's over $1,300 -- its doubled in some cases. And so the access to afford housing is a major issue and for that layer of working-class employees who basically fill the jobs of the service industry whether it's restaurants, hotels, or the tourist industry, there is a tremendous housing shortage for those workers. So you have to be able to provide this mixed income housing for a population, if you want to make sure you are not just gentrifying and only allowing the pop that are in the upper end of the socio-economic spectrum, to return and enjoy this city that will come back is coming back in certain areas.

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